Castro's 2020 guarantee might hinge on his efforts

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January 22, 2013
: Updated: January 22, 2013 11:59pm

You could see it in 2002, when Austin documentary filmmaker Paul Stekler chronicled the changing shape of state politics with his brilliant documentary, “Last Man Standing.” The common theme among Texas Democrats interviewed for that film — including former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros — was that Latino population growth would move Texas within 10 years from the Republican to the Democratic column.

More than 10 years have passed, however, and GOP control of the state only has intensified.

That's why Mayor Julián Castro's Sunday guarantee, on CBS' “Face the Nation,” that a Democratic presidential nominee would carry Texas in 2020, was noteworthy. In one sense, it was just the latest in a series of confident predictions, from Castro and others, that demographics would soon mean destiny for Texas Dems.

This prediction stood out, however, because of how specific it was, and because Castro doesn't make a habit of offering bold, Joe Namath-like guarantees of victory. (Granted, predicting an election win in seven years is less risky than insisting that you'll beat the heavily favored Colts in a few days.)

There's plenty of reason for skepticism. No Democratic presidential nominee has carried Texas in 37 years (and even then, native southerner Jimmy Carter barely edged unelected President Gerald Ford). During the past nine presidential elections, Republicans have won the state by an average margin of 15 percent. (In 2012, Mitt Romney carried the state over President Barack Obama by 15.8 percent.)

Every Democratic nominee in that time has received less than 44 percent of the Texas vote, and only Bill Clinton in 1992 generated a competitive statewide campaign.

Stekler agrees with Castro that a Texas shift — at least from Republican red to swing-state purple, if not all the way to Democratic blue — looks inevitable, but says he's “not sure it's going to turn purple in yours and my lifetime,” much less by the end of this decade.

Some Democrats note that this formerly Democratic state already has flipped once in the modern era and suggest it could just as easily switch back. But the GOP's Texas takeover of the 1980s was a revolution of political alignment, not ideology. Whether dominated by Democrats or Republicans, this state always has been stubbornly conservative.

As the late Gov. Ann Richards (the last Democrat to hold that office) told Stekler in 2002: “The Republicans were always here in Texas. (But) they were in the Democratic Party.”

Stekler says Democratic growth has been stunted during the past four years by the overwhelming disdain that non-urban white voters in this state feel for Obama. Given the party's shrinking share of the white vote, he says Texas Dems desperately need a serious Latino candidate to run statewide.

He sees Castro as the only option in sight.

“Quite frankly, until Mayor Castro runs for governor, this is not going to change,” Stekler says. “If he doesn't run in 2014” (and Castro has insisted that he won't), “don't expect anything to change until 2018.”

Stekler credits the rise of the Texas GOP to the willingness of countless party loyalists to sacrifice themselves by running in hopeless races, as a way to build the party brand.

“A lot of Democrats are waiting until it's easy,” he says. “But the way you make it easier to run is by running.”

Judy Hall, a local Democratic activist who spearheaded Obama's 2008 campaign in San Antonio, attended Monday's presidential inauguration and came away convinced that Organizing for Action, the new grassroots-mobilization effort Obama unveiled this week, will build local progressive movements in Texas and other red states.

“It's a whole new kind of activism,” she says.

Ultimately, however, there's no substitute for the power of a single, dynamic political figure, which means Castro — like Namath — might have to play a key role in making his own guarantee come true.

“A Castro (gubernatorial) run would force the national Democratic Party to put money into the state, instead of taking it out,” Stekler says. “It's all in his hands.”